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The Workshop (2018)
17'
short film, combining drawing, photography and text, black and white, silent


 
Dryden Goodwin's short film 'The Workshop', explores drug-related youth incarceration in one of Britain's high-security training centres for young offenders. For the black and white silent film, Goodwin uses drawing and photography to document a collaborative creative workshop involving a group of young men aged 14-18, detained at Oakhill Secure Training Centre, Milton Keynes. Over 10 days, led by spoken word artist Mr Gee, dramaturg Angus Scott-Miller and Goodwin himself, the young men were invited to create poetry, role-play and drawing to reflect on drug use, county lines and crimes they witnessed and participated in, in their communities. As well as his own fragmentary studies, Goodwin worked with the Oakhill Centre's art teacher to realise the teenagers' own drawings. The film unfolds through a prism of drawings and partially veiled photographs, creating an intimacy, whilst protecting identities. The imagery and text build with glimpses into the teenagers' lives in and out of the secure training centre, revealing aspects of their personal, emotional and sensory relationship to drugs. The film's measured pace and spartan aesthetic, throw into stark relief the young men's potent and visceral experiences both inside the secure training centre and as part of a violent and merciless drug 'industry'. The film hints at their pursuit of belonging, comfort and escapism, as they endeavour to move on.

 
’’.....as the exhibition progresses, the consequences of addiction look ever more menacing and wasteful. Dryden Goodwin has worked with young offenders alongside Kim Wolff, director of forensics at King's. All of the young men in the group were convicted of offences related to drug dealing. One is in prison for murder. To protect their anonymity, their faces cannot be photographed, so instead Goodwin has incorporated his expressionistic drawings of them into a moving and troubling film.......’’ Jonathan Jones, The Guardian

The creation of the film has been supported by the Science Gallery, King's College, London and Oakhill Secure Training Centre, Milton Keynes

 
Stills from 'The Workshop' (2018)

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